The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot, Marianne Cronin [top fiction books of all time txt] 📗

knitted tops and tinted brown glasses. This man was smart, with grey ripples along the sides of his neatly combed hair. He looked like a politician, not a professor.

‘The Professor,’ I said, trying out his name against him.

‘Anyway, do you mind?’ Meena asked, and because I thought she was talking to him, I didn’t look at her, instead going over to my bed and kicking off my shoes. They were red leather sandals that developed a hot, muggy smell whenever I wore them without socks. I wondered if the smell of my feet had made it across the room to the suited man and my nearly naked roommate.

‘Margot?’ Meena said. Her voice had an edge to it that caught me by surprise.

‘What?’

‘Do you mind?’ she asked again.

‘You want me to leave?’

I walked to the park and sat on the grass, getting green stains on my white work dress. And I wondered about the wedding ring nestled in his pocket, and the woman he was married to and the woman I loved, and I wondered when I could go home.

Lenni and the Man at the End

NEW NURSE CAME to me with a confession. At least, it seemed like she was going to confess something. She scuttled towards my bed looking embarrassed. I sat up, channelling Father Arthur. ‘May God forgive you, my child,’ I said, sweeping my hands outwards dramatically, so she could admire my long (imaginary) priest-like robes.

‘What?’

‘You have come to confess something, my lamb?’

‘What?’ She was breathless. ‘No, I need to ask you a favour.’

I was a bit disappointed by her, to be honest; I was ready for secrets and admissions of large-scale wrongdoings. I was ready to pray to Jesus that he might forgive her, while giving her a knowing look that would say, I know all your secrets now and I’m not likely to forget them.

When I didn’t reply, she carried on anyway. ‘It’s Swedish that you can speak, isn’t it?’

‘The Lord speaks in all tongues.’

‘Can you translate? You know, from Swedish into English?’

‘I can. In fact, I was the official translator for my parents’ divorce.’

‘We can’t get hold of our Swedish translator, and there’s a man who’s in a bad way. I know the doctor treating him, I said you might be able to help. Would you mind? As a favour to me?’

I shrugged. I couldn’t understand why she was so nervous. Even when I told her I would do it, the guilt didn’t release her face. I shuffled to the edge of the bed and put on my slippers.

The source of her guilt made itself apparent then. Black, wide, consuming. It came before her, stealthy and silent. I understood why she couldn’t meet my eye as she made her way to my bed. And there I was thinking her a friend. When this whole time she had been Judas – a slithering traitor in waiting, her weapon of choice sliding across the floor to the end of my bed.

‘I thought it would be quicker,’ she said quietly, evidently now wishing that she had chosen tardiness over betrayal.

I didn’t say anything. Sometimes it’s better not to. Silence can be more powerful than speech when trying to convey abject treachery and disappointment. Anything I said would only make her feel better.

I slipped on my slippers and stood. I kept my pace slow and dignified, making sure our eye contact never wavered.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, sweating under the heat of my fury. ‘You don’t have to use it, we can walk!’ Her voice was strained. But it was already there, waiting for me.

‘I just thought,’ she said, faltering, ‘it’s a long way. The other side of the hospital, you know …’

I raised myself up with dignity and turned, letting her help me down into it – black and wide, not built for one so slender as me, but wonderfully impersonal, one size fits all. It had the hospital name and a reference code written on the seat in case anyone should want to steal it. Why anyone would want to do that, I don’t know. I lowered myself down and was surprised to find how much it gave way to me. I rested my hands on the arm rails.

‘Are you sure?’ New Nurse asked.

I lifted my feet up onto the foot rests.

‘Okay, here we go,’ she said with false cheer. I wondered if she would start crying. She pulled it back so that she could swing me round and get us on our way. I knew without asking that it had come from the May Ward, meaning it had been waiting for me this whole time. Destined to be mine when I, or in this case, a friend, deemed me too broken to even walk. When my final shred of independence was torn from me like a septic limb. When they finally admitted that all they could do now was make me as comfortable as possible.

There’s nothing worse than being made comfortable.

Not even my most ardent supporter still believed that I could make it to the other side of the hospital without dying.

As New Nurse wheeled me out of the May Ward and I avoided making eye contact with Jacky as she sat eating crisps behind the nurses’ desk, I thought about a story I once heard. Maybe I didn’t hear it, maybe I read it, but however I came to know about it, it’s a good story. There were two men in hospital. Both of them were ill. One man was told that his condition was going to improve, that he had a life expectancy of many years, and that with time he would recover. The other man was told that he was going to die within a year.

One year later, the man whose death had been predicted was dead, and the man who was told he would survive had survived and reported feeling well. It was then that the hospital realized there had